The FINANCIAL -- On June 26, five leading information technology (IT) vendors announced the creation of the Industry Consortium for Advancement of Security on the Internet (ICASI), a nonprofit organization that will enhance global IT security by proactively driving excellence and innovation in security response.

Founded by Cisco, International Business Machines, Intel Corporation, Juniper Networks, and Microsoft Corp., ICASI provides a unique forum for global companies committed to proactively addressing complex, multi-product security threats and to better protecting enterprises, governments and citizens, as well as the critical IT infrastructures that support them.

According to Intel, the increasing sophistication of attacks and the integration of applications, now common in IT environments, pose real challenges for IT vendors. Online attacks occur more frequently and in more rapid succession, while often spanning international boundaries. To date there has not been a trusted vendor environment that allows companies to identify, assess, and mitigate multi-product, global security challenges together on the customers' behalf. ICASI aims to fill this void.

ICASI does not seek to respond to every product security issue that emerges, but rather the consortium is designed to respond to and ideally reduce the potential customer impact of global, multi-vendor cyber threats. The organization is organized around four guiding principles.

Customer security – Through ICASI's collaboration and leadership, IT vendors will be better able to identify and resolve multi-vendor security threats quickly, thereby helping to reduce the security threat impact and improve customer security.

Agility and effectiveness – ICASI is committed to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of multi-vendor threat resolution and security response practices.

Collaboration and trust - ICASI creates a unique environment where information, necessary to quickly solve security-related threats, can be shared, as appropriate.

Leadership and innovation – ICASI includes leading IT companies from around the world and leverages their expertise to innovate security response excellence, which it shares with the industry.

ICASI's commitment to advance Internet security includes changing how vendors work together on multi-product security fixes. Developing and sharing innovations for preventing and mitigating security challenges is also a core focus for ICASI members.

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